


the language of birds

by ghoulgy



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, childhood romance that persists into adulthood, lapslock, mentioned seungkwan/minghao, seokcheol if u squint, this one goes out to me and the three other people who like boojun, weird references to things that make no sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-28 00:05:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13891989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulgy/pseuds/ghoulgy
Summary: it ends like this: junhui with two tickets back home and seungkwan with one lollipop and a mouthful of cavities.its not so much about the loss of a limb as it is about a lung.





	the language of birds

**Author's Note:**

> this was all written on my phone (a first) after i listened to this song called of age by the frights (its a really good song give it a listen if u have the time)  
> i havent . ever written for seventeen before so like here this is i guess

[The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.

The night sky is vast and wide.]

 _The Language of Birds_ -Richard Siken

 

it ends like this: junhui with two tickets back home and seungkwan with one lollipop and a mouthful of cavities.

it comes on quick, the grief.

its junhui saying something low into the phone receiver and seungkwan not catching it, head pounding, blood rushing out into the space around him.

a failure of the stone skin, he feels too deeply.

“youre a kid,” junhui says and his smile makes seungkwans teeth fall out of his mouth. “i dont want to ask you for more than you can give.”

giving is the only thing seungkwans good at.

he hasnt been a kid in years.

“its hard when you still think im 16 and young and stupid.”

“i think youre one of those things.”

 

its this: four nights spent in a hotel room, four eyes red from crying, the sound of the baby down the hall screaming her lungs out.

“i dont think this is gonna work.” junhui smokes but hes miles away from the nearest cigarette. seungkwan can tell he wants by the way his long elegant fingers twitch on his thigh.

“i think youre not giving it a chance.”

winter leaves and takes with it the last bit of youth seungkwan has left in him.

he aches, though hes not sure why.

junhui sends him flowers. seungkwan keeps them by the door until theyre too ugly to look at anymore, capillaries devoid of water, petals wilted dry. theyre dead, seungkwan knows theyre dead. he cant help but care for them anyway.

junhui leaves in the spring. he does not take seungkwan with him.

but its fine. its okay.

 

seungkwan drinks with hansol until he becomes intimately familiar with the taste of stomach acid, with the feeling of linoleum pressed up against his cheek.

“you should maybe see other people,” hansol says one night when seungkwan is done vomiting up his insides.

butterfly wings litter the floor, hansol wades through the water that reaches up to seungkwan’s midsection and holds him through the shaking.

its not about the loss of a limb as much as it is about a lung.

 

its this: junhui spending nights on seungkwans floor through high school, choking out broken korean and laughing until the sun became him.

“im not a kid.” seungkwan blows bubbles into this chocolate milk and junhui hums melodically in disagreement.

“and im an alien.”

seungkwan used to consider that one.  
other-worldly beauty is by definition alien, junhui fit the bill. fits the bill. will always fit it.

they used to waltz through the woods after dark, seungkwan holding tight onto junhuis hand, going blindly into the fucking void.

those were the days seungkwan bit his tongue so hard he saw white.

 

“hey kid,” junhui says, its summer of the year after he graduated and his eyes twinkle with mischief.

“not a kid,” seungkwan grumbles. he doesnt drink chocolate milk anymore because thats for children.

“okay, kwannie,” junhui snickers. hes leaning over seungkwans desk and his midsection is conspicuously bare.

seungkwan traces the lines with his eyes and sees white.

“come run away with me,” junhui says, but seungkwan cant hear him.

seungkwan stays until he becomes intimately familiar with the shape of junhuis hip bones.

“kwannie, run away with me.” junhui leans down to eye level and god, hes an alien, hes not human.

“why would i do that. ive got homework.” seungkwan stares straight at junhuis bottom lip and chews his own. hopes hes not as red as he feels.

“im cooler than homework.” hes right.

 

its this: seungkwan sick and junhui in pieces on the floor about it. its reams of philosophy essays scattered on the floor, piling up by the second as seungkwan, aspiring moron, thinks up theories regarding beauty and youth in a world where junhui exists.

the greats never did consider a world wherein beauty takes a physical form and roams the earth.

seungkwans done biting his tongue when his inhibitions are loosened by four cans of terrible beer.

“i applied to this school because of you,” he says. hes laying on his dorm room bed and junhuis being covered in line after line of philosophical musings.

“oh?” junhui coughs, alcohol sliding down his esophagus the wrong way.

“youre the most beautiful person ive ever met,” seungkwan says, staring at the ceiling. words sliding out his mouth in the wrong way. love seeping out in the wrong way.

“oh?” junhui giggles.

theyre drunk. seungkwan, for the first time. junhui, for the hundredth.

because hes not a kid. and thats what seungkwan will always be.

 

its this: seungkwan in the aftermath of a chaste kiss, staring at his door, seconds away from having his heart burst straight out of his chest.

thats the middle part.

 

hansol cleans up seungkwans vomit one too many times after junhui leaves. so, he leaves too.

then, seungkwans on the floor of seokmins apartment, hand in seungcheols, crying into the neck of a man hes never met.

“youre a touch pathetic, boo,” the stranger scoffs.

“leave him, hao,” seokmin says, hitting the stranger on the leg.

the water reaches his chin. the butterfly wings no longer follow him.

hes a kid.

hes 21.

he doesnt know what he wants. he just knows that he aches.

this is what makes him a child still. junhui can live without seungkwan. it doesnt work the other way around.

so, when junhui shows up on seungkwans doorstep three weeks after seungkwan sleeps with minghao, seungkwan slams the door in his face.

what he needs more than anything is for the floodgates to fucking close.

it takes a few more weeks for the desperation to fade, a few more months for life to feel worth living again.

 

its this: two years after junhui moves back to china, hes standing alone at a starbucks by seungkwans apartment.

“you know i never learned how to live without you,” seungkwan says to junhuis back.

shoulders tense up.

“thats why you were a kid.”

the water receded somewhere between the end and the middle of after. “i dont think i am anymore.”

junhui smiles, seungkwan can see it. or, he thinks he sees it through the white.

“id like to try again.”

“try what again?” hes being difficult for the sake of the chase.

hope works its way between seungkwans ribs.

“this. whatever we were before.”

 

this is how it begins: seungkwan devoid of water, junhui standing there with a lollipop in his mouth and a coffee in his hand.

“you quit smoking,” seungkwan says to mean _i never stopped missing you._

“you noticed,” junhui says to mean _me too._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! come be my friend @booseoks im frequently fawning over every member of seventeen


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